Culling the Deadwood
by fragrantfields
Summary: The prequel continues: Al and Dan start on clearing land in the Black Hills while woodland creatures laugh and warrants are avoided. The Gem team hold tight in Cheyenne,some better than others.References from Season 1.Ratings for language, prostitution.
1. Chapter 1

**Culling the Deadwood**

**Part 1**

**Fall 1874: The Black Hills**

The trick, he thought, was in the direction. As long as he could look east and see stumps, open space, and downed trees, he could find it in himself to add to the sight with one more felled tree, one more yard gained.

Looking to the west, at the expanse below the ridge stretching thick and black all the way to the darkening sky…that sight made Al want to turn tail and head back to cobblestone streets and brick buildings, until the thought of arrest warrants sweetened the current view.

He wiped the sweat-soaked black hair out of his eyes and turned his back on all that still waited. The coming labor would be upon them soon enough. Focus on the task at hand, that was the key, he thought. _Cuttin' throats or cuttin' trees, man just had to keep his mind on the job, not get spooked by what still waited up ahead._

"Dan! We fell one more, clean the scrub to that stump over there, and call it a day. Sound good?"

The long-haired mountain man growled low in his throat. _Sound good to never set sight on a goddamn fuckin' tree again, _he thought to himself. "Yeah, I think I got about one more fuckin' cut in me."

"You tiring on me, Dan? Gonna let an old man best you on the fuckin' field of battle?"

Al's appearance belied his taunting tone. His hands, wrapped with flannel, were covered in weeping new blisters even as the old ones callused over. His shoulders and back throbbed like hell, underused muscles protesting mightily. He kept hoping each morning would bring improvement, although sleep had been getting less comfortable night by night. There were times every part of his body felt like an aching tooth, dull constant pain with the occasional flash of sharp. He noticed, though, that he was lasting a little longer each day.

Could have been worse, he thought. Climate and weather, along with the scars of past wildfire, had cut a wide swathe through the forest. A lot of the tall pines filling the gulch were just deadwood, dry and brittle, ready to fall after a couple of well-placed hatchet cuts and a few ax swings. The further they worked their way into the gulch, the easier it was to see how much progress they had made, if they looked right.

Dan could hear Al's breathing getting more ragged. He felt bad now about complaining. Boss didn't chatter about unnecessary shit like age, but he figured he was at least a good ten, fifteen years younger than Al. Dan was sick to death of the repetitious cutting, chopping , and felling, clearing out and starting over, but his body didn't seem to mind as much as Al's did.

_Reminds me of the good parts of home,_he thought. His bear-like body meant plenty of power went into each swing of his ax arm, each jerking haul of a trunk. He still kept flannel wrapped around his hands, but he could tell the already thick skin was building leathery calluses against the ax handle.

Not that Al lacked in strength. Their run-ins with the heathen dirt-worshipers were proof of that. For a man not particularly large, he could put his wiry strength together with his fighting skills and bring down a savage in a one-on-one, as long as he was close enough to wield his knife.

He'd never cleared a back forty acres, though, of buried rock and centuries of underground root, sun-up to sun-down. Dan had run from that shit as soon as he was old enough to throw in with road robbers, but the working, the fighting the land, had formed him into the man he was, as much as he had formed scrub land into rows of corn and beans.

"This ain't no fuckin' contest. Let's just get the fucker down and hauled."

90 minutes later, axes freshly sharpened, they felled and hauled the last tree of the day. Dan gathered the axes and hatchets, setting to honing their blades to knife-blade sharpness again. Al got coffee going over the campfire, cutting slices off a haunch of deer killed and cooked the day before. Rough-ground meal, mixed with spring water and fat from the deer, was thrown into a black iron pan, cooking up to a semblance of a hoe-cake. The two men ate in silence, and thought of better meals.

.

.

They saw white men every now and then, hard-looking folk not looking to make friends, wanting their own patch of land cleared enough for a tent and a fire. Most congregated closer to the streams, barely scraping out enough space for a bedroll and room to tie a mule. They came and went. Some stayed in the Black Hills forever, felled themselves by heathens, or greedy whites, or their own stupidity.

Then there were the white men in blue and brass, talking of treaties and heathen ownership and rights. Men of integrity, it seemed, immune to the rumors of gold in the steams and ridges, just waiting to make a man rich beyond imagining. A small detachment of General Crook's men kept them on their toes, illegal squatters fading into the standing trees when the sound of horses and military men filled the air. The whites they found were chased out of Sioux land, Army guns at their backs.

Al had started coming back from trips to the nearest trading post hauling bottles of liquor with more basic provisions. Here and there, white men had started making their way to the clearing, paying in coin or yellow dust for a shot from a grimy glass. A couple would wield an ax for a drink, the excitement of standing in an icy stream looking for gold glimmers having worn thin.

The day General Crook came through a final time, he and his men scattered their campsite and gave them minutes to gather their gear at gunpoint and head back to more legal territory. Al figured by then, he and Dan had cleared enough land for a fair number of miner's tent sites. There was room as well for a couple of large tents offering liquor, pussy, and a few games of chance. The General could chase them back to Cheyenne, or Kingdom Come for that matter, but he couldn't put the trees back up, or make the gold go away.

Dan finished tying his gear to his mount that day, hiding the smile on his weary mug. He thought he'd started smelling snow the past two nights, and was ready to call it a season. The buckskin pouch of gold flakes and a nugget or two rubbed his skin under his shirt. Three days before the first big snow, he and Al rode back into Cheyenne, all hardened muscle, hunger, and plans.


	2. Chapter 2

**Culling the Deadwood, Part 2**

**.**

**A/N: Al and Dan return to Cheyenne and find how their group fared in their absence**

Cheyenne swelled with would-be miners that winter.

Stupid ones, gold-blind, struck out during lulls in the weather, giving too much credit to a handful of sunny winter days. They would be found come spring. Some would inspire tales to be told by the fireside one day, others would lay alone and forgotten. Smart ones read between the lines of the newspapers, gathered equipment, and bided their time until they had a chance to live long enough to dip their pans.

Al and Dan had strode into the mid-sized saloon like conquering heroes, straight-standing and thick-muscled, their clothes stinking of dried sweat and forest dirt. Al's stomach was clenched against hearing how the others had fared in his absence. He'd not forgotten the wreckage he'd found last time.

"We don't allow savages in here, cocksucker." Al turned to the red-faced saloon-keeper, white-haired and grinning. The grin faded as the man took in the weathered, unsmiling face. "Sorry, Al…just makin' a joke, is all. Drink?" He unconsciously moved back a step, wishing he'd kept quiet until the bar was between them.

"Not in a jocular mood, Joe. But I will take that drink." He leaned against the bar as Joe made his way around to pour. Dan downed his in a flash and started scanning the room until Al handed him a small pouch.

"Go secure three rooms at the Warren Hotel down the way. And get the location of the nearest decent bathhouse."

The white-haired man waited until Dan had cleared the door before speaking again, watching him part the crowd with his bulk.

"Well, you look fit enough, Al. Pioneer life must suit you."

Al grimaced and downed his first shot out of the cleanest glass he'd seen in weeks.

"Pioneer life can suck my dick. We worked our balls off, I can tell you that. Cocksucker Crooke and his men chased us out of the Hills last week, but we got a hell of a lot cleared."

Joe raised the bottle and an eyebrow. Al nodded and pushed his glass forward.

"Hope you weren't just making the red man's way easier, doing their work for 'em."

Al smirked at this. "They don't seem interested in all that's laying underfoot, just waiting to be picked up. Don't like whites around their fucking sacred dead or shooting their game, but the heathens I saw up close didn't show any signs of gold fever."

Joe chewed on that a second. "They say anything about gold deposits, yellow rocks or the like?'

Al downed his second shot. "Ones I was close to were past talkin'."

"I need a bathhouse and a real bed," he continued. "And news of my people. What can you tell me?"

Joe poured for himself this time. "Johnny's doing a good job as box herder. Gets more done with less violence than any box herder I've seen. He can't run a game worth shit, but he does fine with keeping the girls in line. I been giving him his split regular, like we said."

"Go on." Al's fingertips tapped with impatience on the stool beside him, out of Joe's sight.

Joe wondered if Al had had that killing stare, dead-eyed and hot at the same time, before he went to the Black Hills. It didn't look new on him, but Swearengen was giving him a chill that he hadn't before leaving out with Dority. _Time in the Hills must've wore down whatever masked that look before_, he thought.

"Jewel…she tries hard, I can say that. If things get rushed…well, she's a fuckin' disaster, to tell the truth."

"Truth would be what I'm after, Joe." The words were casual enough, the tone collegial. If Al hadn't opened his barlow knife, and started digging reddish-brown flecks from under his fingernails as he spoke, Joe might've missed the implied threat.

"Sure, Al. Anyways, I set her to workin' in the kitchen, out of the way, like. Cook says it hurts her own hands to look at her work, but if she leaves her alone, there's pots of cut potatoes, trimmed beans and the like when Cook's ready for 'em. Of a morning, she'll put her hand to baking before the joint gets stirrin'. Same with cleaning. Slow but gets it done, if nobody's around to hinder her way."

"Earned her keep?"

Joe nodded. "I'd say so. I'm willin' to give back half what you paid me to watch after her.

"And Dolly and Wanda are good girls, sweet-natured, got repeaters the first week. I've not seen 'em be quarrelsome, or holdin' money back, you know, like the sneaky ones'll do. Dolly sucks cock like it was candy, times I've made use of her. And Wanda's got some fuckin' tricks about her, got the boys standing in line. Their cuts are in the safe, waiting on you."

Joe spun out the update as long as he was able, knowing he was talking too much, not looking forward to the conversation's continuance.

Al's stomach tightened again. Joe mirrored his tense demeanor. Both knew there was one left to discuss.

Al closed up his knife, clenching it in his fist, thumb still on the catch. "And what of Trixie?"

Joe raised the bottle to pour again, putting the bottle back down when a callused hand stilled his arm.

"We're done drinking for now, Joe. What of her?"

Joe toyed with his bar rag. "She's not been any trouble, really. Most of the time, she takes her turn without complaint." He looked down, then at Al's hooded eyes. "She can be a real pretty girl, when she's cleaned up and got some color to her. I'd say…I'd say she's earned her way okay. I got no complaints, Al. Her cut ain't as big as the others, but it's all there waitin' for you."

Al opened his knife again, started cleaning his nails of his other hand, studying the knife point.

"I suggest you cough up what you're avoidin' telling me, Joe." His hot green eyes darkened as he looked back at Joe. "We neither of us'll be happy if I have to go digging for it."

Joe could smell his own fear-sweat starting. Goddamnit, he wasn't a fucking doctor or soul-saver. Girl was like she was when Al left her here.

"Trixie…well, you know she hits laudanum regular-like."

"Yeah. I know. So?"

There's some stuff around town, mixed stronger than back east. Seems to hit the girls harder, the ones that use it." He looked away. "I had to let one girl go, her being insensible half the time. Before, though, she and Trixie seemed to take to each other."

Joe could hear his pulse in his ears through the silence.

"Trixie's earnings seemed to fall off after that. Johnny…he's not one for keeping up with numbers, but even he thought we should be seeing more coin off her."

"She was holding back on you? And you let her?" Al kept the anger out of his voice, but his grip on the bar was white-knuckled.

Joe wiped at his brow. "She's got a sharp tongue on her when she's mad. Said the last pimp that fucked with her, you…put down without lifting a finger. Said I'd find out the truth of that if I didn't leave her be."

"So you let the whore set the rules. _Jesus,_ Joe…is _that_how you run your joint?"

"Al, I don't want to get crossways with you…I've heard about Virginia City, here and there. She does work some…but most won't go more than once. Guy last week said if he wanted to fuck a corpse he could go rob a grave and save his money."

Al shoved his knife in his pocket. "Tell all of 'em to clean up and meet me over at the Warren in an hour. And I'll take their cuts now." Joe nodded, glad to escape for a few minutes to his office.

He studied the back of a drooping blonde head at a table near the back. The head would slowly drop, hair falling over the side of her face, still, then jerk back up, the drowsy whore trying to stay awake and not fully succeeding. The space around her was empty, customers keeping clear of her. She turned enough for him to see her profile, the sharp chin, the classic nose.

He helped himself to the bottle on the bar as he waited for Joe, pouring into a larger glass this time. The whiskey roiled in his guts as pictures of another blond doper whore ran though his mind. A weathered wooden marker was close enough in his mind's eye that he could feel the rough carved name under his fingers.

A sharp "_crack!_" and sudden pain in his right hand brought him back to the present. He shoved the shattered glass to one side, wrapping the bar rag around his bleeding palm as Joe lay the money pouch on the bar. He shoved it into his pocket next to his knife, called out "One hour, the Warren," as he headed for the door.

Joe pulled another rag from underneath the bar, wiping up Al's blood and the remaining glass shards. He was still looking at the nodding-off whore as Johnny came up behind him.

"Jesus, Joe, what happened here?"

"Your boss, Swearengen, wants you and your crew cleaned up and over to the Warren in an hour. Her, too." He nodded at Trixie.

"Okay…but what happened with the blood and all?"

Joe sighed as he wiped. "Tell me something, Johnny…what about her could set a man to such anger that he'd bust a glass in his fighting hand, spilling his own blood, just lookin' at her?"

Johnny shook his head. "There's been blood between 'em before. They got years together, way before I set eyes on either of 'em." He picked up a large shard of glass and turned it in the light, watching the light bounce off the sharp edges. "I've seen him set his mind to killing them that hurt her, and I've seen the two of 'em set straight at each other like bobcats."

He set the glass down and looked at Trixie, shaking his head. "Sometimes I think they're just too fuckin' much alike, some ways, to get along in peace."

He started rounding up Al's folks, sending the girls to wash, giving instructions. He saved dealing with Trixie for last.

A/N: Comments, reviews, concrit, a couple words of yay or nay will be appreciated :-)


	3. Chapter 3

Warning: Depiction and reference to violence between pimp and prostitute, in accordance with historical accounts of such, sexual references, language, physical violence, drug addiction

**Culling ****the Deadwood, Part 3**

They tried, mostly, to go about their days in industry and peace.

Dan spent his time prospecting in the streets of Cheyenne, looking for a business strike that would set them through the winter. A nervous hotel manager told Al the gimp could do some sweeping and the like for three bits a day. Johnny discreetly steered local gentlemen to Dolly and Wanda's rooms two or three times an evening.

They all tried to stay away from Al's door when he and Trixie were at full tilt. If the hall was fairly quiet, anyone close could hear the swearing, the yelling, rising and falling in pitch as anger and guilt, blame and self-pity warred against each other. Trixie would choke out vivid descriptions of what her body put her through when she tried to stop the laudanum. Al would growl back equally vivid descriptions of her mother's laudanum-fueled slide to an early grave.

They could stay locked in their unremitting combat for hours, seemed like. There'd be breaking glass, the slap of flesh on flesh, then one or the other would leave for a while. Sometimes there would be low murmuring, soft weeping, then silence. The manager stopped offering the remaining rooms on that floor to guests.

.

~~~  
>.<p>

"It's a sweet deal, Al. Could get us through the winter, easy." Dan tried to ignore the fresh scratches on his boss's hands.

Al glared though exhausted greyish eyes. "Thought you understood I meant to be done with workin' for others. "

"Well, it ain't hardly working for someone if he's a thousand miles away, seems like." Dan worried his hat rim as he spoke.

"Spoken like a man who never had to take any part of his hard-earned money and ship it off to some cocksucker back east."

"He said 'free rein, as long as there's a profit'; them's his exact words. Free fuckin' rein, Al."

Al rolled his eyes. "How much fuckin' profit you suppose there's gonna be through the winter, hmm? How many people are following this asshole's lead and getting to a warmer fuckin' climate 'til spring?"

"Not meaning to argue, boss, but with the news comin' out of the Hills about the French Creek find, folks are comin' in as much as goin' out, wantin' to be close come first thaw."

Running a weary hand over his face, Al got to his feet. "Oh, hell, I'll go look at it. Tell those cows to make up a place for the other one tonight in their room. Tell Johnny she's to start takin' her turn with the others, too."

"You sure that's a good idea, boss? Seems like she still runs awful temperish."

Al curled his lip in a grim tight line. "Maybe a trick'll fetch her more of a blow that I've been able to, knock some sense into her. She's going down this path she's hell-bent on travelin', at least maybe I can get something out of it before it comes time to bury her."

He turned away to get his coat, but Dan still saw the wave of pain roll over his face at that last.

~~~~~~  
>.<p>

"Jesus Christ, no wonder that cocksucker left town!" Al flung the pen down, disgusted by the books before him.

Dan chuckled from the other side of the desk. "Leastways, you can tell him any damn thing you want to about profits and he'd not be able to gainsay it."

Al looked around the office that he guessed he could now call 'his'. Winter full on them and the hotel turning into hell on earth, he'd agreed to manage the saloon and sporting establishment while the owner headed back to warmer, and mayhap safer climes_. Dude might have been good enough to run a joint back east, but the lawlessness and violence here _…Al looked at the mangled books again and mentally retracted the thought of him being good enough to run anything. This mess was worse than what he'd found at Daisy's, as far as the bookkeeping part.

"And it come with a decent stable, too, far as I can tell." Most of the whores had stayed on, not much caring who sat in the upstairs office.

Al looked at the books again and shook his head. "That one that left when he did must have been the one he was dippin' his pen into, instead of his fuckin' inkwell and keeping track of business. I thought maybe I could go by last year's orders, vendor's invoices and the like, get some idea of runnin' fuckin' inventory, but there's pages in here virgin as a fuckin' nun."

Dan kept quiet. It worked against his sense of the rightness of things when Al, as much blood on his hands as he had, started talking like an accountant.

"Look," Al pointed his pen at him. "I want you to get up with some road agent types, start getting some deals together before the weather shuts that opportunity down." Al went on to outline the bones of the thieveries, swindles, and schemes that would eventually provide a sizable piece of their income. Dan felt his world right itself again.

.

.

"So, how's she doin'?"

Johnny felt like he was back in school again, up close to the teacher's desk, hoping hard he was close to the right answer. "She's back down to the stuff that ain't so strong, but it's been hard on her. We ain't gettin' complaints or nothing, though." He looked at Al through guileless eyes. "I think she's trying, as best she can. She's back to the stuff from the doctor, not the stuff from Chink Alley."

Al nodded. He'd seen her out on the floor more, looking a little more…_human _than when he'd come back from the Hills. Getting some of her prettiness back, talkin' sensible, most of the time. The wild fighting and recrimination seemed to have worked its way out of her body like the smallpox plague would do, if you were lucky.

"Tell her I want her up here tonight, after she takes her last one."

Johnny kept what he hoped was a poker face as he nodded, too surprised to speak.

.

.

He pulled back quickly. "Jesus, was your last trick a fuckin' buffalo? Go wash up again."

Trixie shrugged and went to the washbasin. "Wasn't no picnic for me, either. Said he'd been out herdin' cattle for two weeks, wanted a piece of pussy before going back to the ranch. Didn't want to take time to visit the bathhouse." She scrubbed as she talked.

He had already gotten in bed by the time she finished. She stood, clean and naked by the side of the bed.

"What do you want me to do?" Her voice was flatter than he remembered.

He sighed and pulled the covers back. "Just come to bed and try not to snore. Maybe blow me in the morning…I still got 'accounts receivable' and the like running around in my head."

They lay there in the silent dark for a while. She was almost asleep, curled into his remembered warmth, when he spoke again.

"Trixie?"

"Hmm?" She reached out her hand towards him from habit, surprised when he shifted away.

"Tell me why you do it."

She groaned. "Did you get me up here just to start shit?"

"I'm serious. It's a simple question, Trixie. Why? What does it do for you?"

She turned on her back. "You been high before. You know what it's like."

"Yeah, it's like having a fuckin' fever and havin' a load on at the same time. So, what does that do for you?" His eyes glittered in the thin moonlight.

"It ain't like that for me. It's like…the softest warm blanket around you, right when you're as cold as you've ever been. Like it's your mama puttin' it around you." She ignored the snort and continued.

"It's like….being in Heaven, but not being dead yet. Nothing hurts, I've not got any sadness…" her voice softened ."I can be whatever I can think…I can have a baby or two, pink and white and snuffling against my bosom. And a house…and I can be somebody's wife, that ain't been fucked by a thousand men, that can't even imagine what that's like." He could hear her voice start to shake as he lay there, unmoving.

"When I'm high, I can imagine that I come up with a Momma and a Pa, and never seen the inside of an orphanage or a whorehouse. Never got beat or kicked." She turned towards him, hoping he might be close to the edge of understanding. "When I'm high, it's like I'm floatin' so far above all this, it's like the high is what's real, and my life…my life is the bad dream. And I can believe that, feel that…until it wears off."

She was quiet in the dark. "So…do you…understand, how it is, that I do what I do?"

He lay rigid, teeth gritted, eyes on fire, forcing himself to cool down. Tried to tell himself that his taking her out of the orphanage when he did was the very thing that kept her now from seeing that he'd given her a better life, mostly, than what she would have had otherwise. Maybe she was honestly ignorant of how many like her were long dead by her age, insides rotten from disease and no doctor, arms tracked and scarred by dirty needles, murdered carelessly by bestial men.

"Al? Did you hear me? I asked, did you understand, now?"

He turned over, his back to her. "I understand I shouldn't ever ask you any fuckin' questions if I want to sleep before dawn."

"But…"

"Yeah…yeah, I fuckin' get it. Now shut the fuck up and go to sleep. I got a busy day tomorrow."

She cursed him in her mind, imagining the sleek, cool glass bottle in her hand, heavy with dreams, as she fell into an uneasy sleep. She dreamed of the back alley path to Chinaman's Alley.

.

.


	4. Interlude: Afraid You'll Die

**Interlude**

**A/N: I wrote this months before I began the decade and a half arc for Al and Trixie as a prequel to "Deadwood". I see now that some of my readers are not familiar with "Deadwood" and are reading these without the canon context, thanks to kind reviewers who have taken to time to post reviews and PM comments (and bless those wonderful folks who aren't Deadwood fans but are reading anyway!) As this is almost free verse and may be confusing to those not up on the details of the show, I've added notes and made some changes that I hope will flesh out the meaning behind the words and structure. **

**.**

**"_At first, you're afraid you'll die. Then, you're afraid you won't." Trixie, to Alma Garrett (HBO's Deadwood, Season One)_**

**Trixie sums up the ordeal of withdrawal Alma Garrett faces in trying to get off laudanum after years of opiate addiction. **

**Trixie's own withdrawal a couple of years earlier was still a disjointed drug-fogged mess of fragmented memories and confusion, but she remembers enough to know it was hell. **

**.**

**"Afraid You'll Die, Afraid You Won't"**

**.**

It was in that last joint they worked in Cheyenne. Al rented the whole place. Big place, lot of rooms.

She'd been flying on her laudanum high, half in, half out, nothing hurt anywhere.

Al bending over her, yelling, shaking her.

_Let me sleep._

_God, he's mad._

"Too fuckin 'high to yell for help."

He was talking to somebody over his shoulder.

"That's why I gave him two for one. I heard about that bastard. Figured with two…" His voice trailed off.

Her bed was a big hammock, swaying back and forth in a summer breeze. Up, and down, and up. She could feel sunlight on her face.

"Trixie okay? He hurt her any?"

_Why's the new guy in here? Al don't like the help visiting._

"Oh, _she's_ fucking_ fine_. Slept through the whole thing. Useless."

Her mouth twitched in a frown. _He's got that tone. God, go the fuck away!_

"Take her downstairs, out the back. Undertaker's a regular. Take this. Don't let him make you pay full price."

Bills rustled. She smiled in her sleep. _I know that sound._

_Arms and legs so heavy..._

.

Roosters and wagons outside. The day's racket had started. Morning has come.

Head hurt like a mother-fucker.

_Shit, did I take too much again? Why am I still in the receiving room? Why's he here?_

"What?" She tried to focus on her boss, raising herself up on her elbows.

"Get a good night's sleep?" He bit off the words, arms crossed, expressionless.

"What are you so pissed off about? Where's Darla?"

She looked around the dingy room. There was the table, she was on the bed…the trunk was in the middle of the room. _He'd been fuckin' Darla on top of the trunk, holding her neck. Then her own eyelids had gotten so heavy…_

He got up, the wicker chair creaking. Walked over to her side. He picked up the clear glass bottle off the window sill. It was half-full of brown liquid. He sat it down on the table next to her.

She looked up at him. The bags under his eyes were almost black. Green eyes were flat and bloodshot.

"Darla's at the undertaker's."

"What's she-"

He picked the bottle up and slammed it down, hard.

"I should pour this down your fucking throat."

His arm shook with the effort it took to take his hand off the bottle and not go for her neck. He looked at her eyes, still glassy. He could smell the stink of her unbathed body, her sour breath. He turned away.

"You want to go ahead and get it over with, feel free. Just…do it in your room. You're holdin' up business."

"Al, what the _fuck_—"She slumped back down as he left.

She could hear him talking to Jewel outside the door.

"Not another fucking word. Keep her out of my sight."

.

Jewel got one of the boys to help Trixie to her stuffy cramped room.

Jewel was in there a lot.

Al saw Jewel bringing up tea. Heard crying, retching. Early on he heard a scream.

.

Room still spinning, Trixie heard the barman open the door. She thought it might be Davy. The lights hurt her eyes too much to look at the figure.

"Al said to keep it down. Damn, did something die in here? "

A muffled "Fuck you" came from under the blankets.

.

Jewel wrestled with bedclothes dripping with vomit and other fluids, bad leg dragging behind her.

Al watched her struggle with the load.

"Take those out the back. And quit looking at me like that."

.

Nobody asked why Trixie was taken off the floor. A couple of the whores started talking about her in the past tense.

One approached Al, offered to help.

"You can buy her a bottle of dope. Pass the hat, make it a big one."

Nobody else mentioned her near Al after that.

.

He could tell people quietly went into her room sometimes. He heard moaning at odd hours. He heard silence heavy as a tombstone.

He quit looking in that direction.

.

.

He kept his door open these days.

He didn't want to hear Jewel or Dan's tentitive steps outside his closed door, them working up the courage to tell him, him waiting with unfamiliar and building dread.

Door open, he'd be able to hear the whispered weeping and throat-clearing coming. He'd have time to brace himself.

He waited, tried not to think about what he waited for.

.

.

Tapping at his open door.

She was clean, a little color in her cheeks, looking at him with clear blue eyes. Hand steady on the doorknob. She gave him a tentative smile.

Her blond hair was shiny and smelled like soap and flowers.

"Yeah?" He looked up from his books.

"I'm better." Sounded calm. A little bit proud.

"So…get downstairs and get to work."

She nodded and started down the hall.

"Trixie!" She turned.

"Any time you're not fucking, I better see you helping Jewel."

"You will."

She went on downstairs, steps steady and light.

No whispers, no weeping today.

He went around his desk and shut his door. He leaned his head against the doorframe.

Almost wished he was a believer.

He said a soundless "Thank you" anyway.

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**A/N: I've chosen to re-create this as a chapter/interlude in the larger story of "Culling the Deadwood", as it feels like the right time in the story to transition Trixie from the deteriorating addict she had become to someone closer to the Trixie we meet in Season One. Reviews, concrit, comments all welcome and wished for!**


	5. Chapter 4

There were days, she thought, that she questioned why she ever went off the dope. She remembered being able to float above her sore skin and weariness, the deep aches in her guts. She almost envied the other whores who had made peace with their needles and their droppers. She hoped it would be worth it…. For a while, it was enough that being clean served as expiation, her penance for not intervening when an orphaned farm-girl whore was murdered not five feet away from where she lay, oblivious.

There were nights when she tortured herself, imagining Darla looking over at Trixie's immobile body, maybe even seeing her vacant opium-grin as she felt her wind choked off. She wondered, then, if Darla had died hating her. A couple of nights since she got off the laudanum, she had come fully awake to see her hand grope the bedside table, hunting for the bottle that was no longer there, her hand not feeling like part of her own body. Those were bad nights.

She did like being keener though, more times than not. Making out more of the news she heard, picking up on dangers and opportunities, noticing more…it all seemed to come a bit quicker to her now. When business was slow and Al was busy, she had even taken to looking at a couple of the books he kept around.

At first, she would get comfortable by the window or the lamp, book in her lap and his battered _Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary _close at hand, going one to the other several times a page. Recently, though, she would find herself lost in the story for two or three pages, dictionary unopened beside her, before she found herself stumped. She dimly remembered being a decent reader at the school near the orphanage, before she started whoring, before the laudanum that came soon after.

The book she was working on these days made her happy and sad at the same time. In her mind, she could see the group of girls, the jealousy, the worries. Sometimes she could see, if she really tried, a kind loving mother. There was always something going on, though, that made her impose her life on the pages.

Strange to read about people being poor when at least two of the girls were old enough to earn their way. Or a young man liking a girl and not wanting to fuck her. She guessed that those realities might not be welcome in books like these.

A shadow fell over her page.

"You're makin' yourself mighty free with my office."

She looked up, part of her still struggling to stay in Orchard House with the March sisters.

"Didn't seem like anybody was looking for pussy right now, far as I could see. Jewel don't need any help, so…"

He cocked his head, hiding a smile at seeing Trixie clean and clear-headed, albeit a bit twitchy without her former constant companion.

"So, what have you found?"

She stroked the ribbon bookmark as she laid the book down in her lap. her eyes were clear enough to show a slight twinkle.

"Did you think this was about whores, that led you to having a book called "_Little Women"_ on your shelf?"

"Oh, that…my room in the Warren had a box of books in the corner, must've been left by a former tenant. Figured I might could sell it later."

She raised an eyebrow. She could see him stealing pretty much anything, but stealing books seemed a little out of his usual line.

He lifted her chin to get a good look at her eyes in the light. "Looks like you're still stayin' away from the dope."

She shook her chin out of his hand. "You could have just asked."

"And you could have just lied, if you were still usin'. And then I would've had to..._deal_ with that." His eyes went a little darker.

Trixie looked down at the book, the crisp black letters against the creamy page. She wasn't sure if it was her new-found clarity or if he had changed, but it seemed he was quicker to punish anyone who he thought was getting out of line; a slap here, a punch there. Darla was far from the last stiff to be sent to the cut-rate undertaker with the clammy hands and rank breath. She sighed as she closed the book on its silk ribbon, marking where she'd stopped. As she neatly put the book and dictionary on his narrow shelf, she wondered if he had always been like this and she'd just been too high to care.

"Sit down."

He gestured at the chair by his desk as he sat and reached for liquor and glasses.

She felt herself relax a fraction when he filled both glasses. He raised his-whether mocking or not, she couldn't tell-in a kind of salute.

"You looked like a fuckin' picture there, in front of the window holdin' your book. Nigh took my breath away."

"Stop it, Al. You want me to leave your stuff alone, just say so."

"I'm givin' you a fuckin' compliment, you prickly cunt. It's a nicer picture than seein' you trying to stay upright and failin', is my point. Makes me remember what kind of smarts you have." He drank and continued.

"There's gonna be some changes."

She stiffened. Change was usually painful, and almost always scary.

"I know you pride yourself on takin' your share of the work, pullin' your weight and the like, havin' it be fair between you and the others."

"Always figured I better, you bein' the way you are."

He sighed. "You'll notice, I'm lettin' that pass, for now." He poured again.

"But from now on, I want you to not think about that, but go with whoever Dan steers to you. Might not be your turn, but you go as he directs."

Her curiosity overcoming her wariness, she finally took her drink.

"What's this about?"

"You being pretty fuckin' smart, now that you're clear-headed, I'll want you to be with tricks that might have somethin' worth me knowin'. Here, sit closer."

She scooted her chair closer as he pulled out paper and filled his pen, preparing to educate her in the next step of her usefulness to him.

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It was so easy.

Little things, like giving them a clear-eyed look with a tilted head and a half-smile, or murmuring a shy-sounding question in the dark, hints of admiration around the edges, was usually all it took. Once their physical needs were sated, their other needs sprang up as hard as their pricks had sprung from their pants.

They needed to be admired. They needed to be absolved. They needed to feel like somebody cared. And most were willing to accept a whore's lies that gave them what they needed as surely as the lies of her body had.

"_So...how much do you get from a job like that?"_

"_You got time to come see me again, or you heading straight out?"_

"_Man does what he has to do, right? How much were they carrying?"_

"_It's just you doing the job? You must be awful brave."_

"_I've never seen one that big! And it's so pretty and shiny. Where's a man find something like that?"_

Taken together, and in the light of day, it would have sounded like the interrogation it was. Slipped into a batch of sweet whispers, accompanied by strokes and nibbles on skin, tricks took it as bed-talk from a bored and curious whore, maybe sweet on them.

Any gaps got filled in by a post-fuck drink on the house and thieves' predilections for braggadocio, Dan or Al back-slapping and glad-handing while foolish men talked too much.

"I can't believe this is workin' ." Trixie blew smoke away from Al's face and tapped the ashes off the end of her cigarette.

He gave her a cynical smile.

"Men love to hear themselves talk at least as much as they love pussy and liquor."

"Yeah, I get that. But that they would tell me how much they're carrying, how they're armed, where they're going…it's fuckin' amazing what they'll say." Self-satisfaction was writ large on her face.

He looked down at the papers in front of him, figures and crude maps, notations around the edges.

"Well, most don't count talkin' to whores as giving away their secrets. More like a man living alone might tell his dog how his day went. Ain't like the creature's able to take the meaning of his words."

He kept working, missing the fleeting look of hurt, then the hard cast that came over her features.

"You're sayin' they figure I'm too fuckin' stupid to do anything with what they tell me."

He didn't look up, intent on mapping out the next job.

"Yeah. And thank God for it, I say. Now hand me—". He broke off as she shoved her chair back and turned towards the door, skirts whirling as she left.

_What the fuck is her problem?_ Al wondered. Sometimes he missed the quiet, calm times the opiates had brought.

He went to the open door and yelled for Dan. They had planning to do and deals to make. He looked again at his notes.

And at least one throat to cut.

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**A/N: Any and all reviews, comments, concrit very much appreciated!**


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